Chapter Five

Sam awoke with a groan, stretching his arms above his head, feeling his muscles extend and wake up. Pushing himself up not a sitting position, he detangled his legs from a blanket that had been thrown over him. Ugh, falling asleep on the couch was a bad idea. His back was already started to twinge from spending hours on the firm surface. The cases that he was working on last night were neatly sitting on the coffee table, his briefcase leaning against it. Pressing his eyes tightly together before opening them again, Sam noticed that the house was oddly quiet.

Glancing at the clock, the time said that it was eight in the morning. Huh, that explained it. Jess had probably taken Emily to daycare and then gone to work, and she had put a blanket on Sam and had left quietly so they wouldn't disturb him. Jess was always saying that he worked too hard. He didn't have to be at work until ten, and the office was close by, so he could afford to take his time this morning.

Heading into the kitchen with the intention of making a pot of coffee, he was halfway through getting the beans ready when he noticed someone standing on his front lawn. Sam stopped, slowly setting the glass down on the counter. Walking forward, he pulled the curtain a little wider, making just enough space so that he could glance out. A man with a leather jacket stood in his grass, but he couldn't see the man's face. The man wasn't moving, and even though Sam couldn't see his face, from the way he was standing, he could assume that the guy was staring very intently at something. Huffing, Sam jerked the curtain closed and strode to the front door, yanking it open and intending to ask the man to leave. But..

Sam's head jerked back and forth. What the hell? The guy was gone. He took a step out onto the porch, craning his neck to look up and down the street. This neighborhood was usually bustling at this time of the morning, people leaving to go to work, kids catching the bus to go to school. It was as if time had stopped on his street. Cars were running but did not move, people frozen mid step on the sidewalk, mouths open and frozen in the middle of sentences. Directly across the street, Lacy, who had waved hello to him every morning as he went to work and she to school, was standing in front of her house on the sidewalk, one hand curled around the strap of her book bag, the other twitching. Dread began to stir in his stomach.

Closing the door behind him, Sam made his way slowly down the stairs. As he got closer to the edge of the property, he could see that jets of the water from sprinklers were floating in mid air, as was the grass that had just been cut by lawnmowers.

"Lacy," Sam called. "Lacy, are you okay?"

Lacy's chest began to heave, as if she were gasping for breath after running a marathon. Sam jogged across the street, concerned for his younger neighbor."Lacy," he repeated. "Lacy, what's wrong?"

She did not respond. At once, every person's head on the street whipped to look at a car coming from down the road. The familiar rumble of an engine made Sam turn, standing side by side with Lacy. The Impala, the car he'd spent a huge chunk of his life in, rolled down the street. Sam opened his mouth to call out to the man driving the car, but it was too late, already turning the corner and disappearing behind a row of houses. And then, it was back to driving up the street. Only faster this time. Sam's body became immobile, as if he were being suspended in the air.

As the Impala sped by faster, faster, faster each time, the clouds and sun moving with it, he and the others' heads whipped back and forth to watch it come and go, heads spinning so fast that Sam got whiplash, pain shooting up from the base of his neck to his skull. Just as Sam thought his neck would be jerked once more, his body became his own again, and he collapsed to the ground, clutching his head as pain split through his skull.

"Sam."

Lacy looked down at him, horror in her eyes. Everyone else on the street had cleared. It was just the two of them now, standing in the dark, a lone street lamp casting an eery glow over a small part of the street. Lacy was no longer in her school clothes, instead in sweatpants and a t-shirt, a small camera in her hand.

"Sam," Lacy repeated, raising a hand to point across the street towards his house. "Who's that?"

Forcing himself to focus and shove the pain away, Sam hefted himself up to one knee, following her finger. On his porch stood the man from earlier. The man, carefully angling his face away from the porch light, seemed to stare right at Sam before a grin spread across his face, and then suddenly the man was sprinting to the side of Sam's house.

Terrified, Sam yelled at Lacy, "Go inside!", as he hauled ass across the street and around the house to the side door, which had been kicked open. Inside, he could hear Jess and Emily sobbing. When had they gotten home? As Sam tried to go through the threshold, the door slammed shut, hitting him in the face and knocking him on his ass.

Dazed, Sam spat blood out of his mouth and stumbled to his feet, banging on the door, screaming, "Jess! JESS!"

A horrified scream pierced through his ears, and Sam threw his body at the door, trying to break it down. As he took a step back to go in for the second time, hands grabbed him from behind.

Sam jerked awake with a scream dying on his lips, his father staring down at him. John pulled Sam close as he gasped for air, eyes wet with unshed tears.

"You're okay, Sam," John told him. "You're okay."

Sam did not reply, trying to get his breathing under control. That nightmare...it had felt so real. It wasn't like his mind playing tricks on him. It was almost as if...he were remembering something. But that was impossible, wasn't it? What he'd dreamt...that had never happened. Sam took a deep breath, his face still buried in his father's chest. His mind was just trying to work through the trauma, that's all. Nightmares weren't unusual, especially not after seeing what he saw, so he shouldn't be too surprised when they happened.

"I'm fine," Sam said, pushing away from John, getting out of bed. One look at the clock told him he only had an hour and a half before he was supposed to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Moore to discuss the funeral arrangements. "We need to get going soon."

"Sam," John stopped him, grabbing his arm. "What did you dream about?"

"Just a nightmare," Sam said dismissively, shrugging his hand off. "I expected it, after..."

"That seemed like more than a nightmare, Sam," John pointed out. "I've never heard you scream like that in your sleep."

"Maybe if you had spent more time with me as a kid you'd know that nightmares were a regular occurrence," Sam replied snidely. John recoiled. Satisfied that he wouldn't be disturbed anymore, Sam strode into the bathroom and locked the door, taking a deep breath and staring at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a tangled mess. Facial hair was starting to grow thicker as well, taking advantage of his low motivation. Reaching a hand up, Sam massaged the bone at the base of his skull.

He still felt faint twinges of pain in his neck.

Sunlight filtered in through the filthy window, and even those weak rays that got through made Bobby's head twinge painfully as he began to wake up, body sluggish and confused after a long night of drinking. Bobby let out a low moan, his bones creaking as he pushed himself up on one arm and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He should't have knocked back so many beers last night, but after yet another round of unsuccessful research, he'd allowed himself to pass out on the couch.

But how had he gotten up here? There's no way he managed to make it up the stairs unharmed after a night like that, not when his grief for Dean had overwhelmed him.

With a heavy sigh, Bobby was about to push himself off from the bed when he saw it, the thick book sitting on the nightstand. Or, more specifically, what was hanging out of the book. The amulet.

He snatched the book up and grasped it in his hands, turning it this way and that. He had given he amulet to Sam when he was younger because the boy was worried about his dad when he went on hunts. The amulet was supposed to provide protection. When John had brushed it aside, Sam and bestowed it upon Dean, who had worn in proudly every day. And so, if Dean was the only one who had it...

How had it ended up here?

Bobby's heart began to race and, ignoring the headache, lumbered down the stairs, book in hand. He scoured the house, looking for any other sign that Dean had been there. Nothing had changed. The dishes were still piled up in the sink, the floors still dusty, old books still sprawled across tables and windowsills. All Dean had left him was the amulet. Bobby sank onto the couch, fingering the necklace.

If Dean had been here last night, that meant that he'd been the one to carry him up the stairs. Although Bobby was happy to have this piece of Dean, a lead, he didn't understand how he'd gotten in the house last night. He was pretty sure he'd locked all the doors, and he'd never been one to give out spare keys to his home. It made Bobby's stomach turn to think that just anyone could have walked into his home last night just because he decided to be drunk and reckless. With another sweep through the house, he found the salt lines undisturbed and the devil's trap above the front door in perfect shape.

Bobby reentered the living room, staring at the book he'd placed on the coffee table. He wanted to open it, wanted to scour its pages and find whatever Dean was trying to tell him. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. What if he didn't like what he found? What if he was hit with another dead end? He didn't think he could take any more failures, not after years of never seeming to be on the right track.

Opening that book would mean making a final decision on Dean's fate, and Bobby didn't know if he could handle it if Dean was dead, didn't know if he'd bounce back from that loss. Although he and Rufus had found the Impala in awful shape, there was a chance, albeit a very small one, that Dean was alive out there. Somewhere.

Grabbing the book, the title reading "Angels, Demons, and the Creatures Between", he tucked it into a duffle bag he had stowed under the desk in the corner, careful not to remove the amulet. In that same desk, in the second drawer under the false bottom, Bobby pulled out Dean's gun, making sure the safety was on before sliding it in the bag as well.

Bobby knew he had to finish this, get answers one way or another. Although he might not like what he found, he knew that he'd never be able to sleep at night if he was constantly left without answers, left wondering what on Earth happened to Dean Winchester. He stomped throughout he house packing, throwing clothes, guns, a laptop and its charger, and several books into bags before hefting them out to his truck, placing them in the trunk.

Pulling out his phone, he dialed Rufus. It went straight to voicemail. Into the receiver, Bobby said, "Rufus, I'm going off the grid for a while, got to take care of some things. I..," he cleared his throat. "I know it's been six years, but I think I have a lead on Dean. It might be nothing, but, Rufus, I gotta make sure. I need to know. Tell anyone that's looking for me that I'll be back soon, they'll just have to make due without me for now. I'll call you soon."

Shutting the phone off and stuffing it in the glove compartment, Bobby climbed into his truck, casting one last look at his home before speeding away from his salvage yard.

"Hang on, Dean," Bobby whispered. "I'm coming for you."

Sam was unable to give the funeral director his full attention. The dream from earlier was still fresh in his mind, and no matter how hard he tried to push it behind him, it kept popping up, that mean in the leather jacket smiling at him, only his shining white teeth visible in the dark. He knew he shouldn't be entertaining the idea that this dream could have been real, but something about it made his stomach clench, made his head twinge, as if his body was trying to tell him to turn back now, that he didn't want to get involved.

Quietly excusing himself, he left Mr. and Mrs. Moore to pick out the coffins, telling them he felt nauseous and that he'd like to be alone. They smiled sadly at him and let him go, watching his lumbering form stumble out of the room, the door shutting with a click behind him.

He shuffled his way out of a side door, ending up in the alley next to the funeral home. Pressing his back against the wall, he allowed himself a few moments of silence before sliding down to sit, knees bunched up against his chest. A hand went to his head and grasped his hair, remembering that he'd promised Jess that he'd cut it. A wave a grief hit him, and now he really did feel nauseous.

"Jesus," Sam hissed. How had it come to this? How had his life been turned upside in just a few days? When he'd gotten out of hunting and had gone to Stanford, and even after he married Jess, there was a part of him that was always looking over his shoulder, expecting Dean or his dad to come crashing back into his life, bringing with them a trial of bodies and stolen credit cards. He figured that it would be a growing process; as in, one day Dean would show up asking for help, and Sam would be guilted into it, and he would continue to be guilted into helping out on hunts until one day the supernatural caught up with him. He never thought that in the span of mere hours he'd see his father again andlose his wife and child. It was as if the universe realized that she hadn't screwed him over for quite some time and decided to throw years worth of trauma and pain into one sitting.

He briefly entertained the idea of karma; maybe he was getting his just desserts for abandoning his first family. If Dean died because Sam wasn't there to protect him, then karma took Jessica and Emily as a consequence. But that was ridiculous! Sam got out of that life for that exact reason: avoiding an early grave. Besides, there's no way that whatever happened to Jess and Emily were connected to Dean.

Pressing his palms to his eyes hard, he willed his brain to shut up for just a few second, to stop with the wild theories. He didn't need that right now.

"Sam?"

Mrs. Moore poked her head out the side door.

"Hey, Mrs. Moore," Sam said, voice hoarse.

"You know, I've told you a thousand times to call me Elizabeth," she said with a small smile, stepping out into the alley. Sam pushed himself up to his feet. She reached a hand out and grabbed his, squeezing it tightly. "I know this has been a difficult time for you," she continued. "But I think that I should give you some answers."

Sam, in his grief and after the panic of that nightmare, had forgotten the reason Jess and Emily had been leaving that night. He just can't believe that she was actually going to leave him.

"I'm not sure I'm ready to hear it right now," Sam said.

"I know it's difficult for you to process," she pushed on, looking up at Sam with sad eyes. She had lost her daughter, too. Sam winced. he hadn't even asked her how she was doing, too caught up in his own head. "But Jess did love you, Sam." He looked away, but her manicured hand gently guided his face to look at hers. "She called me, asking if she and Emily could stay for an indefinite amount of time. I told her of course, but why? And she told me that you were keeping secrets, Sam. And at first I thought, that boy better not be running around with some other woman!"

Sam gaped at her, heat rushing to his cheeks.

She rushed to defuse the situation, "I know you aren't like that, Sam. You would never do that to Jess. But what was I supposed to think when she told me that?" She shook her head. "She said that your father had come and that the two of you were hiding something, something involving your missing brother?" Mrs. Moore sighed. "I know it's none of my business, but I'd like to know why Jess was so riled up. At the very least, I am due an explanation."

"I know," Sam whispered. "I know I haven't even asked you or Mr. Moore how you were doing, and that's really selfish of me. I'm just so caught up in my own head that I forgot about everyone else. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have even showered if my dad wasn't nagging me about it." He guided Mrs. Moore inside so that they were standing in the pristine hallway instead of the shady alley. "My family...I don't know how to describe it, there just aren't the words, but I left for a reason. My mom died when I was six months old, and apparently my dad used to be some great guy, but ever since then..."

Mrs. Moore frowned, concern shining behind her eyes.

Sam continued, "He claims he raised us the best that he could, but he and I both know that is a lie. We - my brother and I - grew up in filthy motel rooms, eating nothing but fast food and candy, and we never stayed at one school for a whole school year. I hated that life, and I grew to resent him and Dean for not being more understanding. So when I got the scholarship to Stanford, I didn't tell them until the day I left."

"Why not? Wasn't Mr. Winchester proud of you?"

"Please!" Sam scoffed. "He was raving mad! Went off on a rant about how I wasted his hard earned money taking the entrance exams and applying. He told me that if I went to Stanford, that I was no longer part of the family. And honestly, it hurt at the time. But looking back on it, I'm glad he kicked me out. I didn't need him. I never did. He and Dean were holding me back, and until they showed up, my life was perfect. And then I find out that my brother Dean has been missing for years, and then Jess and Emily die, and it just seems like the entirety of my world just shattered in the span of two days and I'm trying really hard to keep it together."

"Oh, Sam," she whispered, pulling him into a hug. "Why didn't you ever say anything?"

"I was ashamed," he admitted. "All of my friends came from financially stable families with parents who wanted what was best for them, that cared about them, and I didn't have that, and I didn't want to be reminded of the crap childhood I had. It didn't seem important at that point. I was enjoying life away from the Winchesters, living it up with my full ride to Stanford and an amazing girlfriend. I had no reason to look back."

"And now?" she asked. "What are you going to do?"

Sam looked away. "I," he paused. "I know a lot has happened, but I can't be in Palo Alto right now. Every second I spend here is another second I'm trying to stop myself from splitting apart at the seams, and I know I'm running away, but I don't know how to move past this. I don't know if I can." He let out a bitter laugh. "My entire life was in that house, Mrs. Moore. My wife, my daughter, my unborn child. Everything that mattered to me is gone, and sometimes I wake up expecting to see Jess, and I remember that she isn't here anymore, and every step I take around this town is just another miserable trip down memory lane. And I don't even know what I feel!" He drew away from her to pace. "I'm in pain, I know that, but there's something else burning inside me, like I'm ten seconds away from exploding. But it isn't just anger, it's something quiet, too. There are times where my entire body just wants to shut down and never move again. And I know I have to be strong, but I don't know how to do that."

They were quiet for a long time. Mrs. Moore stared at him, watching his shoulders tremble, as if his body was forcing itself to stop feeling grief, to remain an immovable force. When she had gotten the news that Jess, Emily, and the baby had perished in the fire, she had collapsed onto her husband, her mind trying to process what was happening, trying to figure out what to do from there. Even now, standing in the funeral home, just doors down from where her husband is picking the coffins, it still doesn't seem real, like any moment Jess will pop out and say, "Gotcha!"

But Jess is gone. And so is Emily. Mrs. Moore understood that Sam would need time, and she was willing to give it to him. She worried, though, that him going off with his father - who he just described to be a not so good person - would cause even more destruction to his life. Jess had told her a lot about Sam, about how he didn't go out a lot to parities or school events because his head was always in a book, always studying, always inhaling information. Jess had been pleased when Sam had worked up the courage to ask her out. They'd been together ever since, and Mrs. Moore had been happy that Jess had found a nice boy to settle down with, certainly a step up from past boyfriends who couldn't even get their shit together enough to graduate, much less a job. She knew that letting Sam go off with John without a fight would come back to bite her in the ass, she could feel it deep down, but from the look in his eyes, she could see that he couldn't be stopped.

He felt trapped in Palo Alto, living in a place where he'd watched his family perish. He would get out eventually, and he'd never forgive her if she attempted to hold him hostage there.

"Sam," she murmured, intertwining her fingers with his. He looked up at her, his long hair brushing against his jaw and his face unshaven. "I will miss you, and I hope that one day soon we will see each other again. But," she reached up to brush a lock of hair behind his ear, smiling sadly at him, "if you need to go, then you can. Daniel and I will take care of the funeral. You can come say your goodbyes later if you're not ready for that now."

"Mrs. Moore," he breathed.

"I don't understand what you and your father are up to, I don't know where you are going. But I need you to promise me something."

When he nodded, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a little gold locket, handing it to him. Opening it, he saw that there were two slots for a picture, and in one there was a picture of him and Jess at the beach, Sam looking down at her with clear affection. Tears sprung to his eyes.

"Jess had this made a few weeks ago," Mrs. Moore whispered. "She and I went to an appointment for an ultrasound. It was a girl."

Sam let out a sob, the necklace cool and so tiny in his hands. Mrs. Moore closed his fingers around the locket and pushed it towards him.

"I need you to promise me that no matter where you go, no matter what you do, you don't lose yourself. Grief is a powerful thing, and it can turn you into a person you won't recognize. I need you to remember who you are. Don't ever stop being that boy that Jess fell in love with. Do you understand?"

Sam nodded, unable to stop the tears streaming down his face. She quickly pulled him in for a hug before ushering him towards the door once more. "You have my number. Call me if you need anything, and I mean anything. Don't just drop off the face of the Earth. I expect a phone call."

"Thank you," he whispered.

He left then, and she watched him go, a single tear sliding down her cheek as her last link to Jess disappeared out of her life.